If you take a lot of portrait photos with your smartphone, the new Honor 200 Series should pique your interest. The company partnered with Studio Harcourt, a Paris-based photo studio, to help it ensure the Honor 200 can take high-quality portraits no matter the lighting conditions. The Honor 200 Pro, which leads the Series, hits European markets in just days.
Taking Phone Portraits to a New Level
Smartphone makers have spent years crafting algorithms to help create better portrait shots. Portraits mimic the look of bright camera lenses that can render sharp details of a subject while blurring the background away into colorful smears. Even the top smartphone cameras, however, fall prey to the limitations of phone sensors and lenses. Sometimes they miss hair or glasses or mistakenly blur an arm. Honor hopes its partnership with Studio Harcourt will help change things.
Honor says its product team worked together with Harcourt's photographers to analyze thousands of images and create what it calls the Honor AI Portrait Engine. At the heart of the effort is the ability to more easily adjust light and shadow around subjects. The teams spent more than 400 days poring over more than 1,000 lighting scenarios to determine their data points, which are controlled by the AI Portrait Engine in the Honor 200 series phones.
"While a studio-quality portrait has been out of reach for many until now, the Honor 200 Series sets a new standard in smartphone portrait photography, putting a professional studio in your pocket," said Tony Ran, President of Honor Europe.
The result, claims Honor, are portraits that "manage exposure in bright areas while preserving intricate details in darker lighting scenarios."
Three From Which to Choose
Honor debuted three versions of the phone: the Honor 200 Pro, the Honor 200, and the Honor 200 Lite, each with different specs and price points.
The Honor 200 Pro leads the pack. Available in Black, Moonlight White, or Ocean Cyan, it has a 6.78-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate at a resolution of 2,700 by 1,224 pixels. It reaches a high peak brightness of 4,000 nits. The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor and comes with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. A 5,200mAh battery is inside and it charges at a rapid 100W wired and 66W wireless. Connectivity includes Bluetooth 5.3, dual-band Wi-Fi, and sub-6GHz 5G.
(Credit: Honor)Three 50MP cameras are positioned on the phone, with two on the back and one on the front. The main sensor has an aperture of f/1.9 and relies on optical and electronic image stabilization. The telephoto camera has an aperture of f/2.4 and also supports OIS and EIS. Meanwhile, the 12MP combined ultra-wide and macro camera has an aperture of f/2.2 and shoots with a wide 112-degree field of view. Several Harcourt-branded shooting modes are on board, such as Harcourt Vibrant, Harcourt Color, and Harcourt Classic.
The Honor 200 dials back the specs to a degree. It is available in Black, Coral Pink, Emerald Green, and Moonlight White. It has a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, 2,664 by 1,200 pixels, and a peak brightness of 4,000 nits. Honor picked the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor to power the phone and it comes in several memory and storage configurations (8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage, 12GB/256GB, and 12GB/512GB). The Honor 200 also has a 5,200mAh battery that supports 100W wired charging, but not wireless charging. The phone has the same connectivity options as the 200 Pro.
The 200's camera stack is similar to that of the 200 Pro but relies on different sensors. It features a 50MP main camera at f/1.95, a 50MP telephoto camera at f/2.4, and a 12MP ultra-wide camera at f/2.2. It features the same Harcourt shooting modes as the 200 Pro.
The Honor 200 Lite has a 108MP main camera, a 5MP depth camera, and 2MP macro camera. The selfie camera still boasts a 50MP sensor. It has a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with a peak brightness of 2,000 nits. The phone comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Honor didn't specify what processor powers the phone.
Reasonable Prices
The Honor 200 Pro and Honor 200 are available for preorder in the UK via Honor's website immediately, with an expected retail date of June 26. The 200 Pro costs £699.99, the 200 is £499.99, and the 200 Lite is £279.99. Honor is offering freebies to those who preorder the phones, such as a Harman Kardon Onyx Studio 8 with the 200 Pro and a JBL Charge 5 with the 200. None of the new Honor phones will be sold in the US.